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Jose Setien looks me up and down and says quietly, “You should try my class one day. Not yet, maybe. But one day.”

Maybe.

I know my limits, though I’m learning to stretch them. For two years now, I’ve been at Trainers Fitness Centre on Bathurst St. twice a week under the guiding hand — or driving rein — of Tony Tam. Not so much to get better as to prevent myself getting worse. At this point of my life, maintenance rather than improvement is the chief goal.

That said, I am better all around than when I started. Which is why Tam periodically ramps it up, so it’s always hard, always a real effort.

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Once in a while, I’ll ask myself if it’s worth the exertion. But if I was ever seriously tempted to quit, I’d just have to seek out Setien who, at 70, is twice Tam’s age and a grandfather, but going as strong as ever.

He leads some of the toughest classes the gym offers — two boot camps and two boxing-fitness sessions a week. That’s despite having had both hips replaced a decade ago.

Setien’s nickname used to be “Mountain Man.” That was in the late ’60s when he was featherweight boxing champion of Spain and on the Spanish Olympic team. He comes from Santander, in the shadow of the Pyrenees.

“Coiled spring” may be a cliché but is there a better way to describe him? A woman passing on her way to the locker room remarks, “Jose? He never unwinds!”

Boxing-fitness is a new program but Setien has been running boot camps at Trainers for several years. Both classes, he says, are “very intense, very aggressive.

“You get big, very muscular guys and they die after 10 minutes. Their hearts and lungs can’t send enough oxygen to their muscles. That’s why they need to train. Big muscles are not enough.

“I’m rough,” he continues matter-of-factly. “I call people a few names, I push them. If you’re 50 years younger than me, I want an answer from you. I tell you to do 25 pushups but I want 30. I always want more. I become a different person when I teach.

“Don’t say, ‘I’m a member here, I pay a fee. Don’t tell me what to do.’ I will tell you what to do!”

Setien came to Toronto four decades ago, working in insurance and providing security for celebrities. He started boxing in Spain at 12.

“I had 70, maybe 75 amateur fights, lost maybe eight of them,” he says. “I’m still a hard hitter and I was always very fast. I’d block and hit, block and hit, it’s not a messy kind of style.”

He shows his hands, gnarled from all the blows he’s landed. But his face doesn’t show the impact of too many fists.

“I wasn’t a street fighter,” he says. “I was an athlete as well as a boxer.”

When he was 10, Setien lost his father to throat cancer. It taught him, he says, to be aware of his own health.

“No one, not even your wife, can look after you better than you can look after yourself.

“I eat well, lots of fruits, take vitamins — D is important for this kind of weather. I eat a lot of different meats. Turkey has lots of protein and no fat. Protein repairs muscles.

“I’ve never smoked and I never go to bars. I come from a country where people drink a lot. You go somewhere for coffee in the morning and they give you a cognac with it, too. Not me.”

After his hip replacements, he says, he was sent home early because he was upsetting other patients who weren’t progressing as quickly.

“They’d walk like this.” He leans on a chair for support. “They’d be crying and feeling sorry for themselves. I’m more disciplined. They told me to walk and I walked. It’s all up here.” He taps his head.

“Not everybody likes me. Some people think I’m arrogant. I’m not. Yeah, I’m mouthy, I’m lippy. But I just want to be young. I can’t sit down talking baloney and playing cards.”

Setien pulls on boxing gloves and begins to throw punches at a heavy bag. His fists are a blur and, artificial hips or not, he moves nimbly. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee …

I tried boxing-fitness a couple of times at another gym during a short-lived exercise regime seven years ago. I wasn’t quite 60 but it was way too intense for me.

Now? Well … maybe.

But I would never argue with Setien’s philosophy: “Screw this thing about getting old! I don’t want anyone saying, ‘Poor guy. What a nice guy he was.’ I want to hear, ‘85 and you’re still here?’

“You have to be fit. The heart has to be working, the liver, the lungs have to be working, everything has to be working. If you stop, you die.”

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